are their standards of speed too, I suppose.

At dark, when all had passed, we followed ourselves down an abominably
dangerous road, and over the bridge to camp, which looked and sounded
like a big busy town, scintillating with fires and resonant with the
yells of black drivers packing their waggons.

_June 26_--_Eight A.M._--We are in action, my waggon at present halted
in the rear. We harnessed up at 3.45 this morning, and marched some
miles to the top of another hill, overlooking another plain, a
crescent of steep kopjes on the left, occupied by Boers. The convoy
halted just as a spattering rifle-fire ahead struck on the still
morning air (it was just dawn), and the chatter of a Maxim on the left
flank. We were all rather silent. A staff-officer galloped up,
"Walk,--March," "Trot," rang out to the Battery, and we trotted ahead
down the hill, plunged down a villainous spruit, and came up on to the
level, under a pretty heavy fire from the kopje on our left. For my
part, I was absorbed for these moments in a threatened mishap to my
harness, and the dread of disgrace at such an epoch. My off horse had
lost flesh in the last few days, and the girth, though buckled up in
the last hole, was slightly too loose. We had to gallop up a steep bit
of ascent out of the drift, and to my horror, the pack-saddle on him
began to slip and turn, so I had to go into action holding on his
saddle with my right hand, in a fever of anxiety, and at first
oblivious of anything else. Then I noticed the whing of bullets, and
dust spots knocked up, and felt the same sort of feeling that one has
while waiting to start for a race, only with an added chill and
thrill.

The guns unlimbered, and came into action against the kopje, and we